A pitch-perfect account of how hip-hop culture drew in the author and how his father drew him out again-with love, perseverance, and fifteen thousand books. Into Williams's childhood home-a one-story ranch house-his father crammed more books than the local library could hold. "Pappy" used some of these volumes to run an academic prep service; the rest he used in his unending pursuit of wisdom. His son's pursuits were quite different-"money, hoes, and clothes." The teenage Williams wore Medusa- faced Versace sunglasses and a hefty gold medallion, dumbed down and thugged up his speech, and did whatever else he could to fit into the intoxicating hip-hop culture that surrounded him. Like all his friends, he knew exactly where he was the day Biggie Smalls died, he could recite the lyrics to any Nas or Tupac song, and he kept his woman in line, with force if necessary. But Pappy, who grew up in the segregated South and hid in closets so he could read Aesop and Plato, had a different destiny in mind for his son. For years, Williams managed to juggle two disparate lifestyles- "keeping it real" in his friends' eyes and studying for the SATs under his father's strict tutelage. As college approached and the stakes of the thug lifestyle escalated, the revolving door between Williams's street life and home life threatened to spin out of control. Ultimately, Williams would have to decide between hip-hop and his future. Would he choose "street dreams" or a radically different dream- the one Martin Luther King spoke of or the one Pappy held out to him now? Williams is the first of his generation to measure the seductive power of hip-hop against its restrictive worldview, which ultimately leaves those who live it powerless. Losing My Cool portrays the allure and the danger of hip-hop culture like no book has before. Even more remarkably, Williams evokes the subtle salvation that literature offers and recounts with breathtaking clarity a burgeoning bond between father and son. Watch a Video

A meditation on race and identity from one of our most provocative cultural critics. A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family’s multigenerational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a “black” father from the segregated South and a “white” mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of “black blood” makes a person black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he’d never rigorously reflected on its foundations—but the shock of his experience as the black father of two extremely white-looking children led him to question these long-held convictions. It is not that he has come to believe that he is no longer black or that his kids are white, Williams notes. It is that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them—or anyone else, for that matter. Beautifully written and bound to upset received opinions on race, Self-Portrait in Black and White is an urgent work for our time.

Losing Our Cool exposes the surprising ways in which air conditioning changes human experience: giving a boost to global warming that it is designed to help humans endure; enabling an otherwise impossible commuter economy; and altering human migration patterns. Stan Cox argues that by reintroducing traditional cooling methods and putting newer technologies into practice - and by moving beyond industrial definitions of comfort - people can keep themselves comfortable and keep the planet comfortable too.

When everything sucks, change everything . . . And that's exactly what Hannah Friedman set out to do in an ambitious attempt to bust out of a life of obscurity and absurdity and into an alternate world of glamour, wealth, and popularity. Being dubbed 'That Monkey Girl' by middle school bullies and being pulled out of sixth grade to live on a tour bus with her agoraphobic mother, her smelly little brother, and her father's hippie band mates convinces Hannah that she is destined for a life of freakdom. But when she enters one of the country's most prestigious boarding schools on scholarship, Hannah transforms herself into everything she is not: cool. By senior year, she has a perfect millionaire boyfriend, a perfect GPA, a perfect designer wardrobe, and is part of the most popular clique in school, but somehow everything begins to suck far worse than when she first started. Her newfound costly drug habit, eating disorder, identity crisis, and Queen-Bee attitude lead to the unraveling of Hannah's very unusual life. Putting her life back together will take more than a few clicks of her heels, or the perfect fit of a glass slipper, in this not-so-fairy tale of going from rock bottom to head of the class and back again.

Theater actress Susannah Peters is artistic, dramatic, and passionate. Billionaire businessman David Groff doesn't do emotions. Or so he thought. A whirlwind romance with this sultry dancer throws David's orderly world upside down. He never knew he could love this deeply or need anyone this much. He learned long ago that emotions lead only to pain. He can't afford to let his guard down even for a moment. Susannah is a woman who feels things deeply, and Broadway can be a ruthless business. Can David learn how to give her the love and devotion she deserves, or will his stoic demeanor drive her away forever? Read the entire Wall Street to Broadway series: Losing His Shirt Losing His Cool Losing Her Inhibitions Losing Her Fear Finding Their Forever Terms: opposites attract, billionaire romance, steamy romance, steamy contemporary romance, romance novels, love stories, low angst romance, celebrity romance, singer romance, broadway romance, no cliffhangers, HEA, romance series, strong heroine, heartwarming, contemporary romance, broody billionaire, actress romance, dancer romance

With Speech Is My Hammer, Max Hunter draws on memoir and his own biography to call his readers to reimagine the meaning and power in literacy. Defining literacy as a "spectrum of skills, abilities, attainments, and performances," Hunter focuses on dispelling "literacy myths" and discussing how Black male artists, entertainers, professors, and writers have described their own "literacy narratives" in self-conscious, ambivalent terms. Beginning with Frederick Douglass's My Bondage My Freedom, W. E. B. Dubois's Soul of Black Folks, and Langston Hughes's Harlem Renaissance-memoir The Big Sea, Hunter conducts a literary inquiry that unearths their double-consciousness and literacy ambivalence. He moves on to reveal that for many contemporary Black men the arc of ambivalence rises even higher and becomes more complex, following the civil rights and the Black Power movements, and then sweeping sharply upward once again during the War on Drugs. Hunter provides rich illustrations and probing theses that complicate our commonsense reflections on their concealed angst regarding Black authenticity, respectability politics, and masculinity. Speech Is My Hammer moves the reader beyond considering literacy in normative terms to perceive its potential to facilitate transformative conversations among Black males.

Describes how the author's hip-hop culture radically contrasted with his book-loving father's endless pursuit of knowledge, revealing how the father-son bond eventually overcame the genre's rebellious messages.

A girls prattle of the now then, the then again, her albatross, and other stuff as well.

An epic and unforgettable love story continues in Redeeming 6, the fourth book in the international bestselling and TikTok-phenomenon Boys of Tommen series, from Chloe Walsh. I'm saving you, six. Joey Lynch's life is falling apart. Obsessed with proving himself to the only person he's ever truly trusted, Joey fights to stay away from a world that could destroy his life. The odds are against him, but can he keep his head above water? Aoife is absolutely unwilling to give up the boy she loves, so she is determined to save him from self-destruction. She becomes trapped in a world she doesn't understand, but her heart is stronger than what's trying to drag her down. Aoife will never give up on Joey, no matter how much is stacked against them. Through heartbreak and horror, Aoife and Joey have had each other's backs, and this time is no different. Following the beloved pairing from Saving 6, Redeeming 6 will only increase your love for the Boys of Tommen universe. This book is perfect for readers looking for: New adult/YA crossover Irish romance Dual POVs Friends-to-lovers Angsty tearjerkers Bingeworthy TikTok books Readers are saying: "This book brought me back to life." "JOEY AND AOIFE FOREVER." "THIS SERIES OWNS A PART OF MY SOUL." "I read this in under 24 hrs." "Chloe Walsh writes the kind of romance novels where you can just tell the [characters] are SOULMATES, literally made for each other, two pieces of a puzzle! Joey and Aoife are everything and deserve the whole world!!!"

In A Musician's Paradox author and lifelong working musician Ty Kiernan explores the intersection of music and philosophy with a series of philosophical discussions on life, human behavior, music, faith, relationships, and the connection between musician and instrument. Being torn between two worlds-with the frustration, the insecurity, and the dearth of understanding about why musicians play music, all the while loving and not being able to give up an obsession with music itself-he focuses on the particular psyche of the musician but appeals to all who contemplate this almost inherent duality of their own existence. Music is life and life is music, and music can ultimately transmute into wisdom-that is, it can raise our consciousness to help wisdom flow within us. For the musician-and perhaps for everyone-thinking about these connections and the relationship between cause and effect in general may offer us a clue into the possibility of something more in our lives.